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The Ridiculously Detailed Rabbit-Hole
Having unintentionally fallen head over heels for the 'Soviet D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers' film, I ended up disappearing down a YouTube rabbit-hole of barely-comprehended unsubtitled Russian, which has been flowing dizzyingly over my head. Sadly one does not absorb vocabulary by simply being exposed to it, or at least not once one has passed the age of puberty -- I did learn two more specialised words, "predat'", to betray (hand over) and "zagovor", a plot/conspiracy (for-speaking) :-p
What happened was that I ended up, due to a slight confusion, sitting through two and a half hours of so of "The Return of the Musketeers" (not the sadly sub-par Lester sequel, but the totally off-the-wall belated *fourth* film in the now post-Soviet series -- given the title I had assumed it was the sequel, but in fact it was filmed thirty years later, and by this point the comedy elements of the original had gone above and beyond to become more than a little bizarre. With the language barrier added to the virtual impenetrability of the plot I spent the entire running time struggling frantically to work out who was who and what was going on; the only reason I was not totally lost was the fact that I immediately recognised that we had skipped all the way to the finale of "The Man in the Iron Mask", and that I had been previously reading (translated) YouTube comments where people were complaining about the extreme unwarranted silliness of a sequel featuring Aramis in the afterlife and a ring of immortality....
The funny thing is that I did not in fact hate the film, which is apparently regarded as an utter travesty and insult to its beloved precursor. I mean, it *is* awful in many ways, and the 'extended version' (which I then went back and watched for another three hours in the hopes that it might clarify things) is even more mind-boggling; I would not actively recommend it to anyone, let alone someone who loved the 1970s production. But... I didn't actually dislike it, as I remember ending up doing for the Lester sequel, which did feel like a slap in the face for the original characters. In fact, as mentioned, I was even engaged enough to want to find out what on earth was going on :-D It is of course possible that if I had understood more of the dialogue I would have found it more intolerable; as it was, I was basically going on body language, names, and a few scraps of phrases (the words 'father', 'son', and their various diminutives will get you a long way in terms of the plot :-p)
But... while it has virtually none of the merits of the original, bar a couple of reasonably good songs (which again would have been more effective if I had been able to interpret more of the lyrics: d'Artagnan opens the film by asking "Why?", but I have no idea what he is querying or complaining about, although the song sounds as if it ought to be significant!), what it does have, I think, is its heart in basically the right place. The impression I got was that the purpose of making the film was to supply the Musketeers with the happy ending which Dumas had denied them, and while it had a largely ludicrous premise it wasn't without charm. It is effectively a fix-it fic that is pure fantasy and knows it.
And so far as I could work out, it goes as follows:
Athos is aged and mortally ill, and drinks to the memory of each of his friends in turn.
D'Artagnan is killed, as in canon, by a stray cannon-ball at the very moment of military victory, when he receives his field-marshal's baton. His final words are "Tell Athos, Porthos and Aramis..." but he expires before he can complete the sentence, and the unknown young officer who is bending over him reports instead for the benefit of posterity that they were "All for one, and one for all".
The Parlement is in turmoil due to the Queen's debts and we meet a minister who turns out to be Colbert.
Porthos attempts to use an improvised explosive against the soldiers who are trying to capture him and Aramis, and dies as in canon in the ensuring rockfall. Aramis escapes to the awaiting boat but is forestalled by the mysterious Leon, who appears to be in command of the troops but has been lying around shirtless instead of joining in the fighting :-p
They duel, and Aramis appears to recognise the young man's sword. He hints that he knows who Leon's father is, but before he can disclose his identity Leon inflicts a mortal wound on him. Aramis welcomes death, since this releases him from the burden of making a terrible decision (implied: whether he can bring himself to kill this unknown son or not).
Meanwhile there is a totally bizarre intervening section in which d'Artagnan has himself loaded into a catapult and fired into the besieged fortress, rescues some naked French soldiers(!) and breaks the siege single-handed...
Then we have the 'other world' section, where all the dead characters in their old Musketeer uniforms are reunited around a fountain (apparently including d'Artagnan's horse).
A character who turns out to be the King (Louis XIV) makes an appearance in his bath, and we also get the first appearance of what will become a running gag where he constantly asks where his (presumably) mistress is, and she replies 'Behind you". She is a sly dark girl whom I vaguely assumed to be intended as Hortense Mancini, but who, to my astonishment, according to the end credits was actually supposed to be Louise de la Vallière(!)
Colbert tells the King that Aramis and his co-conspirator Porthos have been disposed of, which is a bit embarrassing as they were apparently regarded as Heroes of France, so Louis decides to sweep their rebel status under the carpet by holding a celebration in Paris in honour of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan who all died on the same day, and summoning their descendants, if any, to court to participate. (This actually makes sense as a plot device to bring the younger generation arbitrarily together -- not because they all have talents vitally important to the realm and greater than those currently holding officially appointed rank, but simply as a cynical figurehead gesture!)
Colbert tells the Queen that Mazarin has escaped with all the treasure of France (hence the film's subtitle of "Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure"), and appears to threaten her with a word I took to be 'échafaud', the scaffold [Edit: yes, now that I have a dictionary to hand the word turns out to be the same in Russian!] She panics and is comforted by one of her ladies in waiting who will eventually turn out to be d'Artagnan's daughter, though I didn't realise this at the time. The girl assures the Queen that she has a brother who can help, and apparently dresses up in a male costume and shoulder-length wig to pass herself off as said non-existent brother -- I hadn't even realised that they were supposed to be the same character, let alone that anyone was actually *intended* to mistake 'Jacques'/Jacqueline for a real man :-p She is so very obviously feminine in her trousers and swinging bob of hair that I took it for granted that d'Artagnan's daughter had just been brought up as a tomboy, and everybody knew it...
(And why is it always d'Artagnan who has the sword-fighting daughter? see also the eponymous 1994 film, and Michael York reprising his role in La Femme Musketeer, which I remember enjoying in similar schlocky vein :-p)
She manages to meet and quarrel with Random Unknown Stranger (who on my third viewing I now think was the 'unknown young officer' present at d'Artagnan's death), who will eventually be revealed to be the presumably illegitimate son of Aramis, but doesn't himself yet know this. Raoul, still mourning Athos, and Porthos's daughter Angelica, a buxom young nun, are also brought to court.
I really liked Angelica as a character - she is a welcome change from the standard trope of the heroine who passes herself off as a boy (see Jacqueline) to beat all the men at their own game. She is a nun, and appears to be genuinely and cheerfully devout; she shares her father's vast zest for life and his appetites, but she barely knows one end of a sword from another (and in the one rather unconvincing scene where she does fling herself into combat rather than standing back, she ends up instead by hurling her full weight onto her opponents' stomachs as a trademark move!) She is brave, but she is a natural peacemaker -- she can turn cartwheels for joy, but she is no great horsewoman. Basically, she is not a man manqué but quite happy and boisterous in her own identity. I found Angelica convincing as the offspring of the uncomplicated Porthos without being in any way a clone of her father, and as a protagonist in this genre she is refreshingly unusual.
There is a puzzling little girl at the festivities whom I think is probably supposed to be a foreign princess and the King's future bride -- he is told that she is twelve, but "Kings know how to wait"...
The Queen has a long talk with Random Unknown Stranger, who is apparently her godson(?) and here at her personal invitation, and tells him for the first time of his father's identity. According to the credits his name is Henri, although I had heard it as André :-p Then she tells him to go and team up with the three official Musketeer Offspring to retrieve the royal treasure, while Colbert tells Captain Leon to keep an eye on them. There is also a mysterious Beautiful Evil Female who lurks around the plot and whom I naturally assumed to be the next-generation offspring of Milady in parallel with all the other descendants, but who is addressed towards the end of the film as "Kuralle", and who appears from the credits to be intended to represent Louise de Kéroualle, of all people....
In England, there are Evil Monks (who are apparently not on the same side as Beautiful Evil Female), who threaten her and assassinate the runaway Cardinal Mazarin for his stolen treasure. Mazarin is now dead and turns up in the 'other world' alongside d'Artagnan and his friends, which seems to surprise them - on rewatching I now realise that they are talking about the 'ring of immortality', a piece of vocabulary which had not been in my possession on first viewing, leaving me utterly bemused :-p
Milady Junior turns up in Colbert's office and gives him Mazarin's ring, which she stole from the hand of the corpse after murdering the assassin (although the minister assumes she assassinated Mazarin herself :-p) They mention the Abbé d'Herblay, "who is himself dead" -- I didn't previously catch this reference to Aramis, although I still don't know what they were saying about his connection to the case!
Meanwhile Jacques is expecting to fight a duel with Random Unknown Henri, with whom in the true spirit of her father she quarrelled and challenged the day before. Henri, on the other hand, has turned up only to recruit the three of them for the Queen's private mission, and when Leon and his troops arrive to arrest the supposed combatants for duelling they are able to protest perfect amity for one another with kisses bestowed all round -- including Angelica kissing Leon, much to his humiliation in front of his men. (Quite a neat twist on the hackneyed 'they fight a duel but bond by fighting the guards sent to arrest them' Musketeer trope :-D)
We then get the 'next-generation Song of the Musketeers', which again I would probably have appreciated a lot more if I had been able to understand anything of the lyrics :-p I eventually managed to crack the much-repeated chorus as "Muiy -- Komanda", "We are a team: if there are friends around us then no-one can defeat us", but failed to get any of the 'patter' in between....
Porthos somehow or other manages to manifest himself in the cellar of the aged Jussac, their old opponent of the Cardinal's Guards, and accidentally or intentionally uses his ghostly powers(?) to set fire to it, incinerating Jussac in the process and causing him, too, to appear by the fountain in his old uniform. He starts talking to Porthos about the goings-on of "your son Leon", thus finally revealing to me at least that Aramis's recognition was not of his adversary as his own long-lost child but as that of Porthos. So far as as I can tell the circumstances of this relationship (of which Angelica is clearly completely unaware) are not explained anywhere either.
History repeats itself as the Musketeer offspring attempt to sail from the closed Channel ports by stealing the requisite permit ("razreshnie") from Leon, who has been sent to prevent them. And everyone, including the Evil Monks and the ghosts of Jussac and Mazarin, manages to turn up independently at the same inn where Mazarin was killed.
Milady Junior interrogates Leon at gunpoint for unknown information (are they on the same side or not?) and then seeks to attract the attention of Raoul ("Comte de la Fere -- I'm here. Don't look round"), telling him that she was sent from the Queen, who is worried about Henri. I'm not clear at all what she hopes to gain by this.
Meanwhile the Evil Monks have easily located the treasure hidden in the stables, but instead of making off with it they bring it into the inn to taunt the Offspring, who demand that they hand it over but are easily disarmed by the monks' apparent supernatural powers. Fortunately Aramis discovers that he and his friends, although they are invisible to the living, are sufficiently tangible to cloud the vision of a monk with a pistol by interposing themselves in his path (nobody ever said it had to make sense :-p)
The Offspring quickly source new swords and there is a battle during which Raoul finds himself fighting first one, then two, then three opponents with d'Artagnan, unknown to him, at his side doubling (and possibly psychically directing?) every move he makes and cheering him on. He -- or they -- neatly defeat the opposition, and d'Artagnan twitches the boy's blade into an appropriate salute. Then someone throws a knife at Raoul from across the room. D'Artagnan moves to intercept it... but of course the blade goes right through his incorporeal body, and it strikes Raoul in the heart.
Athos, who wasn't looking terribly happy about events even before this happened, flinches but does not seem surprised -- his cup has been half-empty too often. D'Artagnan is devastated as he watches Athos' beloved son collapse.
(And I was *not* expecting that; when the plot has discarded every other scrap of canon post-Belle-Île, the one bit of Dumas you wouldn't expect them to retain was going ahead with killing off Raoul...! Not least because it runs counter to the neat 2x2 pairing that was being established, with Henri clearly attracted to 'Jacques' (and under no more delusions as to her actual sex than I was) and Raoul chivalrously attentive to Angelica -- although given her profession, the mutual feeling is presumably of an entirely fraternal nature, at least in Raoul's mind.)
Summoning Athos urgently to the side of the dying boy, d'Artagnan pours out an impassioned prayer -- "I, who have never prayed in my life before" -- that they may be returned to the world of the living in order to intervene, and to the astonishment of the onlooking Porthos and Aramis it seems that a miracle has indeed taken place; they are returned to their bodies and are able to touch and feel. And there is fresh blood on d'Artagnan's doublet that is not his own.
"I know whose blood that is," he says grimly, "and we need to hurry..."
Only it seems that after all even a miracle was not enough; Raoul's wound was fatal, and Athos, returned to life, can do nothing save bury the son who has already left it. (A very strange plot twist, especially in a film of this broad slapstick nature -- when the course of nature is overset in the name of human grief, you would expect it at least to have the desired effect!)
Meanwhile the other three have been captured and tied up (weirdly, Jacques and Henri, who rather to Henri's enjoyment were last seen being roped together, are now pinioned to separate posts) and the Evil Monks are busy threatening them. Leon, lurking outside with Milady Junior, seizes this moment to lasso the treasure chest and hoist it out of the cellar. D'Artagnan, Aramis and Porthos burst in upstairs and help themselves to the three swords conveniently removed by the monks earlier from Jacques, Henri and Raoul, while Milady Junior gallops off with the treasure in her carriage... which turns out to also contain Jussac, who has inexplicably been restored to life as a result of his old enemy's prayer (although much to Mazarin's annoyance the cardinal remains an impotent ghost :-p)
At this point Jussac actually proceeds to tell the young woman that she is the living image of Milady de Winter, which left me even more confused than before as to who she was actually supposed to be and what she was doing in the story :-( (Also, the actress bears no obvious resemblance to Margarita Terekhova, who played the original Milady -- it's simply a generic role of beautiful female antagonist.)
Back at the inn Leon's troops burst in as Aramis is trying to use his authority to quell the Evil Monks ("I have returned from Heaven to rebuke you!"), and a general melee ensues. Downstairs, meanwhile, we see a barrel of gunpowder burning on a long fuse, and Henri confesses his feelings to Jacqueline as they await the coming explosion. Fortunately this is one of the convenient movie fuses that burn on and on for as long as necessary ;-)
After a prolonged combat the Musketeers burst in to free their offspring, and there is a lengthy reunion during which all and sundry continue to ignore the proverbially ticking clock that is the burning fuse, until d'Artagnan finally almost casually takes an axe to the barrel (not the most obvious way of forestalling an explosion...) More soldiers turn up, and Henri and Jacques beg the use of their respective fathers' swords to show off their ability ("but carefully!" d'Artagnan admonishes her).
And then finally it occurs to Angelica to ask what has become of Raoul :-(
"He has gone where we will all soon be reunited, and asks you not to seek him" -- a very Athos reply :-(
The Evil Monks report back to their abbot, and pay the price for failure in the form of poisoned wine, because Evil Overlords always punish their incompetent underlings :-p
Captain Leon attempts to arrest everyone as soon as they reach French soil, but Porthos pulls out his sword -- an exact match to the one with which Leon duelled and killed Aramis after Porthos' death -- and assures him he is the new Baron du Vallon (de Bracieux de Pierrefonds). Angelica is delighted by this revelation: "I *told* you I loved you", she assures her newfound brother, reminding him of the kiss she bestowed upon him to defuse the attempted arrest over Jacques and Henri's duel. And Leon promptly changes sides.
Jussac and Milady Junior arrive in Paris first, carrying the treasure, while the others have to fight their way into the Palace despite d'Artagnan's eloquence. Jussac and d'Artagnan fight one final duel to settle a lifetime of rivalry, and neither can defeat the other; just as they clasp hands and become friends, Jussac is shot and fatally wounded by Leon's lieutenant :-( It's not clear if it is in response to this act of fraternisation with the enemy, or if the shot was intended for d'Artagnan himself, who happened to have stooped at that precise moment to retrieve his hat...
Incensed, d'Artagnan fights his way single-handed through the palace (and Boyarsky at almost sixty has sufficient agility and force of character to convince us that he can do it successfully!) Meanwhile, Henri, Angelica and the others -- now including Leon, who was absent from the earlier battle -- have somehow managed to catch up with Milady Junior, finally named as "de Kuralle", and Leon takes the treasure from her despite her accusations of betrayal. The chest is opened, and d'Artagnan immediately pulls out a teardrop necklace which is evidently supposed to be significant (is it meant to represent the Queen's famous diamonds that were given to Buckingham? It clearly isn't the diamonds we see in the original film) and insists on giving it back to the Queen in person.
Of course she is not expecting to see him, and it comes as a bit of a shock ("You're alive!" "Well, for the moment...."). He also gets into a bit of a pronoun tangle when she insists on congratulating him on his fine 'son' Jacques, whom he keeps accidentally referring to in the feminine :-p And Anne of Austria extends her hand to him, but permits him to kiss her instead lightly on the lips ("all the reward I could ever require" -- was there some kind of romantic history between them in the preceding films?)
When Jacques releases a mass of blonde curls from beneath her dark wig, the Queen finally realises that this 'brother' is actually the lady-in-waiting from the beginning of the film -- while for my part I realised only at this point of my first viewing that the character was intended to have been passing as a man, rather than simply as a girl choosing to wear trousers ;-p
Finally the recovered treasure is presented by Colbert -- with some 'encouragement' -- to the King and Queen, who is now wearing the matching earrings that go with her necklace. Leon is rewarded with the post of Captain of the King's Musketeers. And the infamous ring of immortality suddenly made an appearance, in what seemed an entirely gratuitous and unbelievable plot twist; after multiple viewings I now realise that it had at least been mentioned previously in dialogue, although I feel that its existence and powers surely must have been established in some previous film. You can't just drop an element like that unheralded into your historical fiction as a casual McGuffin for everyone to chase after :-O
D'Artagnan pulls it out of the chest and as a loyal subject presents it to the Queen (why would he not have given her that in their previous meeting, rather than the teardrop necklace?) She announces that as it is a mystery of the Templars (ah, that perpetual excuse for fantasy magic!) Aramis is the proper person to have charge of it. But he also disclaims it with thanks, and offers the ring instead to Athos -- "the eldest and most deserving of us all". Athos has no wish for immortality, desiring only to be reunited with his lost son beyond the grave, and in his turn he offers the ring to Porthos, who gets more uncomplicated joy from the things of this world than anyone else he knows. Porthos protests that he is getting tired, and offers the ring to d'Artagnan, whom he sees as the most deserving, and who was struck down in the hour of his triumph before he could enjoy it.
But d'Artagnan -- despite the protests of his daughter, who cannot bear to lose him again -- also rejects the ring, saying that he chooses eternal friendship over immortality; he too is setting off for the afterlife. And he flings the ring out of the window, where it miraculously turns into a cloud of doves amid a dazzling light. Two of them flutter to land on him (I'm not sure if this is supposed to be part of the plot!) and one on the Queen, who appears delighted to have a dove sitting on her head and reaches up to cradle it while giving her blessing to Henri and Jacqueline to pair up together. D'Artagnan regards this encroachment upon his daughter with a decidedly fierce expression, but after a gentle reproof from the Queen he jerks his head in grudging consent and with the hint of a smile.
And then the four former Musketeers go out together and down the steps in front of the palace to meet the end of their brief day of renewed life, and the whole Court comes out to watch them and bid them farewell. The credits roll and the whole thing basically turns into a panto walkdown, with the other main characters following behind -- including Cardinal Mazarin, who was last spotted bobbing around the ceiling looking mournfully at his sequestered treasure, and apparently including Raoul walking hand in hand with Angelica, which makes no sense in an in-story context. Neither does a shot that seems to depict Raoul taking leave of Athos alongside the other Offspring bidding farewell to their parents... I suspect that nobody ever imagined that anyone in the audience would be straining their eyes to make out the details of what was happening to the characters beneath the rolling credits obscuring the screen :-p (But somebody did go to the trouble of setting up and filming that material, presumably in order to give the actor equal screen credit in the finale sequence irrespective of the logic of having the character in existence at that point!)
One advantage of filming your sequel[s] so many years after the original hit is of course that the cast have aged at the same rate as their characters are supposed to have done, without any special effects or recasting required; we genuinely are seeing Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan thirty years later. Mikhail Boyarsky has lost none of his live-wire energy as a middle-aged d'Artagnan whose bright eyes and flashing grin still dominate every scene he is in; Porthos's luxuriant chestnut locks are revealed eventually to be an (in-film) wig when he wipes his brow, but he too still radiates physical power and the uncomplicated joy of living. The other two are sadly greyed by the passing years, alas; time and regrets have clearly taken their toll on Athos, the oldest of the friends, who is grave and frail even after his 'resurrection', while golden Aramis the beautiful is shockingly ravaged by age to a degree that makes him almost unrecognisable. They both take pretty much a backseat role.
The younger generation are not particularly distinctive and don't get a lot of characterisation, with the arguable exception of Angelica; the performers come across as fairly bland and interchangeable pretty faces who could have come from any modern sitcom. I did end up with a sense of genuine relationship between the generations, though -- I can definitely see this Porthos as an larger-than-life indulgent father to his little girl, and d'Artagnan as a proud parent cheerfully ready to extricate Jacqueline from whatever over-ambitious scheme she has got herself into this time, while Athos both leans on his son's support and tries to protect him. Under the circumstances Aramis and Henri don't really have much of a relationship other than a general starstruck 'my father is famous' versus 'I'm cheering for this one because he was my contribution', but that's understandable. Leon, I think -- ironically, for a self-made man so competent and efficient -- is more needy and eager to see something of himself in Porthos, who is prodigal enough in his affections to lavish them in return.
Rereading what I have been writing above, I think the reason for my relatively favourable reaction to the film lies in the fact that, however patently ridiculous and cardboard it might have been, it evidently managed to give me Feelings about the characters. Boyarsky still has the ability to carry the film practically single-handed with conviction (without his d'Artagnan, I'm not sure how much of it would be left) and, as with "Love Never Dies", I found myself spending far more time analysing the content than its quality objectively deserved -- in this case simply to try to understand what was going on when I could barely comprehend one word in five, but I did care enough to *want* to know....
I'm not sure how much more sense the plot would have made if I had watched the four films in order, rather than accidentally jumping to the final one in the series :-) An explanation for the existence of all those (?illegitimate) offspring might at least have been hinted at, and I definitely suspect there was some backstory for the Queen that I was expected to know.
But contrary to what I initially wrote above, having now gone through the entire non-subtitled film for a *third* time in order to clarify in my mind what was in the 'extended cut' and what wasn't -- and most of the extra material was, as usual, better left off, although there were a couple of bizarre sequences that apparently *did* make it through the cutting process but somehow failed to register with me on the first viewing all the same! -- I found that I definitely was picking up more of the dialogue than previously simply by virtue of the constant exposure and repetition. And, admittedly, by virtue of actually using a dictionary on words that stood out; even by learning two or three new words at every viewing you do very gradually acquire necessary vocabulary. If I repeated this sort of intensity of immersion on a daily basis for months I might actually improve my comprehension (but I draw the line at repeatedly watching bad films over and over again for months at a time!)
The irony is that I only watched the film in the first place in order to try to get some context for a song in an Athos fanvid... which I had already seen mentioned as existing only in the extended cut! (And yes, it does... and you can see exactly why they cut it, because it doesn't really fit into that scene and definitely ruins the pacing. Presumably the songs were written separately before the script was finalised.) So I suppose I must have known on some level from the start that I was going to have to watch the three-hour-plus version as well :-O
Am I really that much of an Athos-fan? I didn't think I was even a fan of the Musketeers story in particular; yes, I'll admit to verging on fervent 'fandom' of the 1978 musical, which outweighs this one on just about every level imaginable -- well, I think when you find yourself being recommended random Russian-language YouTube videos *and watching them*, to be honest that's got to be a bit of a giveaway -- but I'm certainly not planning to write fan-fiction on that, let alone on this one. Although, as in the case of "Love Never Dies", a bad film probably offers more openings than a good one ;-)
But I did get an idea for a typical Igenlode angst-fic based on a prompt from a fanvid I saw for the BBC 'Musketeers'... which I may or may not write! (I've written it in my head, and am not sure it merits actual publication; if I had come up with a resonant ending for it, that would be different, but I didn't really.)
As for Athos -- this omitted song basically suggests, so far as I could make out the lyrics (some of which were transcribed in the comments to the original fanvid that used it) that at the end of his life he saw himself as having "betrayed his love" for Milady in encompassing her death for the greater good and to save his friends. Bringing her up out of nowhere at a point where the actual surrounding dialogue was about his longing to see *Raoul* felt like an irrelevant intrusion; and I never got the impression that Athos spent his life immured in love for his wife's memory in any case, romantic as the idea might seem. What scarred him was not the fact that he killed the woman he had passionately loved to the point of blindness (there is no indication that when he encountered her again, plotting against d'Artagnan's life, he felt any nostalgia for the sham of his marriage) -- it was the fact that the woman he had passionately loved had never even existed in the first place.
He was basically in the position of those woman activists who were used as 'cover' for police infiltration, and who felt utterly violated when they discovered that the man with whom they had believed they had a relationship was not only manipulating them for cynically political ends -- making use of their beliefs and ideals while falsely pretending to share them -- but in many cases already had a wife and family back 'home'. The man they thought they loved was a completely fictional construct tailored to exploit their weaknesses, and that sort of discovery is calculated to shatter your self-belief and any inclination to trust or open up to vulnerability again.
I wondered if the song made any more sense in the original context of the film, but it didn't :-p I can imagine that there might exist a context in which that particular train of thought could plausibly develop, but the 'ring of immortality' guff definitely wasn't it...
Should I attempt to watch the other two films in the 'Soviet sequence', "Twenty Years After" and "Thirty Years After"? I managed to locate them on YouTube, but of course those are not subtitled either -- and I know from the experience of watching excerpts of the first one with and without the subtitles just how much character detail and charm gets missed out when you can only grasp the very broadest outline of the scene, even when you have previously seen it with the captions and know in theory what is happening. So if they are any good, I wouldn't get anything like the full effect... and if they are not good (and from comments on the original I derived the general impression that, as tends to happen, each sequel was a little more of a let-down than the first, until you reach the stage of a triumph of hope over experience) then I would get the disappointment of that discovery.
On the other hand, could they actually be any worse than this one? ;-p On the third hand, I never really liked Dumas' "grown-up" theme of the friends growing away from each other and finding themselves ultimately in conflict; it may be interesting character development, but it is a depressing experience. So do I want to experience an adaptation of my less-favourite bits? (At least this film started from the end of Dumas and proceeded to consciously bring the characters back together :-P)
What happened was that I ended up, due to a slight confusion, sitting through two and a half hours of so of "The Return of the Musketeers" (not the sadly sub-par Lester sequel, but the totally off-the-wall belated *fourth* film in the now post-Soviet series -- given the title I had assumed it was the sequel, but in fact it was filmed thirty years later, and by this point the comedy elements of the original had gone above and beyond to become more than a little bizarre. With the language barrier added to the virtual impenetrability of the plot I spent the entire running time struggling frantically to work out who was who and what was going on; the only reason I was not totally lost was the fact that I immediately recognised that we had skipped all the way to the finale of "The Man in the Iron Mask", and that I had been previously reading (translated) YouTube comments where people were complaining about the extreme unwarranted silliness of a sequel featuring Aramis in the afterlife and a ring of immortality....
The funny thing is that I did not in fact hate the film, which is apparently regarded as an utter travesty and insult to its beloved precursor. I mean, it *is* awful in many ways, and the 'extended version' (which I then went back and watched for another three hours in the hopes that it might clarify things) is even more mind-boggling; I would not actively recommend it to anyone, let alone someone who loved the 1970s production. But... I didn't actually dislike it, as I remember ending up doing for the Lester sequel, which did feel like a slap in the face for the original characters. In fact, as mentioned, I was even engaged enough to want to find out what on earth was going on :-D It is of course possible that if I had understood more of the dialogue I would have found it more intolerable; as it was, I was basically going on body language, names, and a few scraps of phrases (the words 'father', 'son', and their various diminutives will get you a long way in terms of the plot :-p)
But... while it has virtually none of the merits of the original, bar a couple of reasonably good songs (which again would have been more effective if I had been able to interpret more of the lyrics: d'Artagnan opens the film by asking "Why?", but I have no idea what he is querying or complaining about, although the song sounds as if it ought to be significant!), what it does have, I think, is its heart in basically the right place. The impression I got was that the purpose of making the film was to supply the Musketeers with the happy ending which Dumas had denied them, and while it had a largely ludicrous premise it wasn't without charm. It is effectively a fix-it fic that is pure fantasy and knows it.
And so far as I could work out, it goes as follows:
Athos is aged and mortally ill, and drinks to the memory of each of his friends in turn.
D'Artagnan is killed, as in canon, by a stray cannon-ball at the very moment of military victory, when he receives his field-marshal's baton. His final words are "Tell Athos, Porthos and Aramis..." but he expires before he can complete the sentence, and the unknown young officer who is bending over him reports instead for the benefit of posterity that they were "All for one, and one for all".
The Parlement is in turmoil due to the Queen's debts and we meet a minister who turns out to be Colbert.
Porthos attempts to use an improvised explosive against the soldiers who are trying to capture him and Aramis, and dies as in canon in the ensuring rockfall. Aramis escapes to the awaiting boat but is forestalled by the mysterious Leon, who appears to be in command of the troops but has been lying around shirtless instead of joining in the fighting :-p
They duel, and Aramis appears to recognise the young man's sword. He hints that he knows who Leon's father is, but before he can disclose his identity Leon inflicts a mortal wound on him. Aramis welcomes death, since this releases him from the burden of making a terrible decision (implied: whether he can bring himself to kill this unknown son or not).
Meanwhile there is a totally bizarre intervening section in which d'Artagnan has himself loaded into a catapult and fired into the besieged fortress, rescues some naked French soldiers(!) and breaks the siege single-handed...
Then we have the 'other world' section, where all the dead characters in their old Musketeer uniforms are reunited around a fountain (apparently including d'Artagnan's horse).
A character who turns out to be the King (Louis XIV) makes an appearance in his bath, and we also get the first appearance of what will become a running gag where he constantly asks where his (presumably) mistress is, and she replies 'Behind you". She is a sly dark girl whom I vaguely assumed to be intended as Hortense Mancini, but who, to my astonishment, according to the end credits was actually supposed to be Louise de la Vallière(!)
Colbert tells the King that Aramis and his co-conspirator Porthos have been disposed of, which is a bit embarrassing as they were apparently regarded as Heroes of France, so Louis decides to sweep their rebel status under the carpet by holding a celebration in Paris in honour of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan who all died on the same day, and summoning their descendants, if any, to court to participate. (This actually makes sense as a plot device to bring the younger generation arbitrarily together -- not because they all have talents vitally important to the realm and greater than those currently holding officially appointed rank, but simply as a cynical figurehead gesture!)
Colbert tells the Queen that Mazarin has escaped with all the treasure of France (hence the film's subtitle of "Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure"), and appears to threaten her with a word I took to be 'échafaud', the scaffold [Edit: yes, now that I have a dictionary to hand the word turns out to be the same in Russian!] She panics and is comforted by one of her ladies in waiting who will eventually turn out to be d'Artagnan's daughter, though I didn't realise this at the time. The girl assures the Queen that she has a brother who can help, and apparently dresses up in a male costume and shoulder-length wig to pass herself off as said non-existent brother -- I hadn't even realised that they were supposed to be the same character, let alone that anyone was actually *intended* to mistake 'Jacques'/Jacqueline for a real man :-p She is so very obviously feminine in her trousers and swinging bob of hair that I took it for granted that d'Artagnan's daughter had just been brought up as a tomboy, and everybody knew it...
(And why is it always d'Artagnan who has the sword-fighting daughter? see also the eponymous 1994 film, and Michael York reprising his role in La Femme Musketeer, which I remember enjoying in similar schlocky vein :-p)
She manages to meet and quarrel with Random Unknown Stranger (who on my third viewing I now think was the 'unknown young officer' present at d'Artagnan's death), who will eventually be revealed to be the presumably illegitimate son of Aramis, but doesn't himself yet know this. Raoul, still mourning Athos, and Porthos's daughter Angelica, a buxom young nun, are also brought to court.
I really liked Angelica as a character - she is a welcome change from the standard trope of the heroine who passes herself off as a boy (see Jacqueline) to beat all the men at their own game. She is a nun, and appears to be genuinely and cheerfully devout; she shares her father's vast zest for life and his appetites, but she barely knows one end of a sword from another (and in the one rather unconvincing scene where she does fling herself into combat rather than standing back, she ends up instead by hurling her full weight onto her opponents' stomachs as a trademark move!) She is brave, but she is a natural peacemaker -- she can turn cartwheels for joy, but she is no great horsewoman. Basically, she is not a man manqué but quite happy and boisterous in her own identity. I found Angelica convincing as the offspring of the uncomplicated Porthos without being in any way a clone of her father, and as a protagonist in this genre she is refreshingly unusual.
There is a puzzling little girl at the festivities whom I think is probably supposed to be a foreign princess and the King's future bride -- he is told that she is twelve, but "Kings know how to wait"...
The Queen has a long talk with Random Unknown Stranger, who is apparently her godson(?) and here at her personal invitation, and tells him for the first time of his father's identity. According to the credits his name is Henri, although I had heard it as André :-p Then she tells him to go and team up with the three official Musketeer Offspring to retrieve the royal treasure, while Colbert tells Captain Leon to keep an eye on them. There is also a mysterious Beautiful Evil Female who lurks around the plot and whom I naturally assumed to be the next-generation offspring of Milady in parallel with all the other descendants, but who is addressed towards the end of the film as "Kuralle", and who appears from the credits to be intended to represent Louise de Kéroualle, of all people....
In England, there are Evil Monks (who are apparently not on the same side as Beautiful Evil Female), who threaten her and assassinate the runaway Cardinal Mazarin for his stolen treasure. Mazarin is now dead and turns up in the 'other world' alongside d'Artagnan and his friends, which seems to surprise them - on rewatching I now realise that they are talking about the 'ring of immortality', a piece of vocabulary which had not been in my possession on first viewing, leaving me utterly bemused :-p
Milady Junior turns up in Colbert's office and gives him Mazarin's ring, which she stole from the hand of the corpse after murdering the assassin (although the minister assumes she assassinated Mazarin herself :-p) They mention the Abbé d'Herblay, "who is himself dead" -- I didn't previously catch this reference to Aramis, although I still don't know what they were saying about his connection to the case!
Meanwhile Jacques is expecting to fight a duel with Random Unknown Henri, with whom in the true spirit of her father she quarrelled and challenged the day before. Henri, on the other hand, has turned up only to recruit the three of them for the Queen's private mission, and when Leon and his troops arrive to arrest the supposed combatants for duelling they are able to protest perfect amity for one another with kisses bestowed all round -- including Angelica kissing Leon, much to his humiliation in front of his men. (Quite a neat twist on the hackneyed 'they fight a duel but bond by fighting the guards sent to arrest them' Musketeer trope :-D)
We then get the 'next-generation Song of the Musketeers', which again I would probably have appreciated a lot more if I had been able to understand anything of the lyrics :-p I eventually managed to crack the much-repeated chorus as "Muiy -- Komanda", "We are a team: if there are friends around us then no-one can defeat us", but failed to get any of the 'patter' in between....
Porthos somehow or other manages to manifest himself in the cellar of the aged Jussac, their old opponent of the Cardinal's Guards, and accidentally or intentionally uses his ghostly powers(?) to set fire to it, incinerating Jussac in the process and causing him, too, to appear by the fountain in his old uniform. He starts talking to Porthos about the goings-on of "your son Leon", thus finally revealing to me at least that Aramis's recognition was not of his adversary as his own long-lost child but as that of Porthos. So far as as I can tell the circumstances of this relationship (of which Angelica is clearly completely unaware) are not explained anywhere either.
History repeats itself as the Musketeer offspring attempt to sail from the closed Channel ports by stealing the requisite permit ("razreshnie") from Leon, who has been sent to prevent them. And everyone, including the Evil Monks and the ghosts of Jussac and Mazarin, manages to turn up independently at the same inn where Mazarin was killed.
Milady Junior interrogates Leon at gunpoint for unknown information (are they on the same side or not?) and then seeks to attract the attention of Raoul ("Comte de la Fere -- I'm here. Don't look round"), telling him that she was sent from the Queen, who is worried about Henri. I'm not clear at all what she hopes to gain by this.
Meanwhile the Evil Monks have easily located the treasure hidden in the stables, but instead of making off with it they bring it into the inn to taunt the Offspring, who demand that they hand it over but are easily disarmed by the monks' apparent supernatural powers. Fortunately Aramis discovers that he and his friends, although they are invisible to the living, are sufficiently tangible to cloud the vision of a monk with a pistol by interposing themselves in his path (nobody ever said it had to make sense :-p)
The Offspring quickly source new swords and there is a battle during which Raoul finds himself fighting first one, then two, then three opponents with d'Artagnan, unknown to him, at his side doubling (and possibly psychically directing?) every move he makes and cheering him on. He -- or they -- neatly defeat the opposition, and d'Artagnan twitches the boy's blade into an appropriate salute. Then someone throws a knife at Raoul from across the room. D'Artagnan moves to intercept it... but of course the blade goes right through his incorporeal body, and it strikes Raoul in the heart.
Athos, who wasn't looking terribly happy about events even before this happened, flinches but does not seem surprised -- his cup has been half-empty too often. D'Artagnan is devastated as he watches Athos' beloved son collapse.
(And I was *not* expecting that; when the plot has discarded every other scrap of canon post-Belle-Île, the one bit of Dumas you wouldn't expect them to retain was going ahead with killing off Raoul...! Not least because it runs counter to the neat 2x2 pairing that was being established, with Henri clearly attracted to 'Jacques' (and under no more delusions as to her actual sex than I was) and Raoul chivalrously attentive to Angelica -- although given her profession, the mutual feeling is presumably of an entirely fraternal nature, at least in Raoul's mind.)
Summoning Athos urgently to the side of the dying boy, d'Artagnan pours out an impassioned prayer -- "I, who have never prayed in my life before" -- that they may be returned to the world of the living in order to intervene, and to the astonishment of the onlooking Porthos and Aramis it seems that a miracle has indeed taken place; they are returned to their bodies and are able to touch and feel. And there is fresh blood on d'Artagnan's doublet that is not his own.
"I know whose blood that is," he says grimly, "and we need to hurry..."
Only it seems that after all even a miracle was not enough; Raoul's wound was fatal, and Athos, returned to life, can do nothing save bury the son who has already left it. (A very strange plot twist, especially in a film of this broad slapstick nature -- when the course of nature is overset in the name of human grief, you would expect it at least to have the desired effect!)
Meanwhile the other three have been captured and tied up (weirdly, Jacques and Henri, who rather to Henri's enjoyment were last seen being roped together, are now pinioned to separate posts) and the Evil Monks are busy threatening them. Leon, lurking outside with Milady Junior, seizes this moment to lasso the treasure chest and hoist it out of the cellar. D'Artagnan, Aramis and Porthos burst in upstairs and help themselves to the three swords conveniently removed by the monks earlier from Jacques, Henri and Raoul, while Milady Junior gallops off with the treasure in her carriage... which turns out to also contain Jussac, who has inexplicably been restored to life as a result of his old enemy's prayer (although much to Mazarin's annoyance the cardinal remains an impotent ghost :-p)
At this point Jussac actually proceeds to tell the young woman that she is the living image of Milady de Winter, which left me even more confused than before as to who she was actually supposed to be and what she was doing in the story :-( (Also, the actress bears no obvious resemblance to Margarita Terekhova, who played the original Milady -- it's simply a generic role of beautiful female antagonist.)
Back at the inn Leon's troops burst in as Aramis is trying to use his authority to quell the Evil Monks ("I have returned from Heaven to rebuke you!"), and a general melee ensues. Downstairs, meanwhile, we see a barrel of gunpowder burning on a long fuse, and Henri confesses his feelings to Jacqueline as they await the coming explosion. Fortunately this is one of the convenient movie fuses that burn on and on for as long as necessary ;-)
After a prolonged combat the Musketeers burst in to free their offspring, and there is a lengthy reunion during which all and sundry continue to ignore the proverbially ticking clock that is the burning fuse, until d'Artagnan finally almost casually takes an axe to the barrel (not the most obvious way of forestalling an explosion...) More soldiers turn up, and Henri and Jacques beg the use of their respective fathers' swords to show off their ability ("but carefully!" d'Artagnan admonishes her).
And then finally it occurs to Angelica to ask what has become of Raoul :-(
"He has gone where we will all soon be reunited, and asks you not to seek him" -- a very Athos reply :-(
The Evil Monks report back to their abbot, and pay the price for failure in the form of poisoned wine, because Evil Overlords always punish their incompetent underlings :-p
Captain Leon attempts to arrest everyone as soon as they reach French soil, but Porthos pulls out his sword -- an exact match to the one with which Leon duelled and killed Aramis after Porthos' death -- and assures him he is the new Baron du Vallon (de Bracieux de Pierrefonds). Angelica is delighted by this revelation: "I *told* you I loved you", she assures her newfound brother, reminding him of the kiss she bestowed upon him to defuse the attempted arrest over Jacques and Henri's duel. And Leon promptly changes sides.
Jussac and Milady Junior arrive in Paris first, carrying the treasure, while the others have to fight their way into the Palace despite d'Artagnan's eloquence. Jussac and d'Artagnan fight one final duel to settle a lifetime of rivalry, and neither can defeat the other; just as they clasp hands and become friends, Jussac is shot and fatally wounded by Leon's lieutenant :-( It's not clear if it is in response to this act of fraternisation with the enemy, or if the shot was intended for d'Artagnan himself, who happened to have stooped at that precise moment to retrieve his hat...
Incensed, d'Artagnan fights his way single-handed through the palace (and Boyarsky at almost sixty has sufficient agility and force of character to convince us that he can do it successfully!) Meanwhile, Henri, Angelica and the others -- now including Leon, who was absent from the earlier battle -- have somehow managed to catch up with Milady Junior, finally named as "de Kuralle", and Leon takes the treasure from her despite her accusations of betrayal. The chest is opened, and d'Artagnan immediately pulls out a teardrop necklace which is evidently supposed to be significant (is it meant to represent the Queen's famous diamonds that were given to Buckingham? It clearly isn't the diamonds we see in the original film) and insists on giving it back to the Queen in person.
Of course she is not expecting to see him, and it comes as a bit of a shock ("You're alive!" "Well, for the moment...."). He also gets into a bit of a pronoun tangle when she insists on congratulating him on his fine 'son' Jacques, whom he keeps accidentally referring to in the feminine :-p And Anne of Austria extends her hand to him, but permits him to kiss her instead lightly on the lips ("all the reward I could ever require" -- was there some kind of romantic history between them in the preceding films?)
When Jacques releases a mass of blonde curls from beneath her dark wig, the Queen finally realises that this 'brother' is actually the lady-in-waiting from the beginning of the film -- while for my part I realised only at this point of my first viewing that the character was intended to have been passing as a man, rather than simply as a girl choosing to wear trousers ;-p
Finally the recovered treasure is presented by Colbert -- with some 'encouragement' -- to the King and Queen, who is now wearing the matching earrings that go with her necklace. Leon is rewarded with the post of Captain of the King's Musketeers. And the infamous ring of immortality suddenly made an appearance, in what seemed an entirely gratuitous and unbelievable plot twist; after multiple viewings I now realise that it had at least been mentioned previously in dialogue, although I feel that its existence and powers surely must have been established in some previous film. You can't just drop an element like that unheralded into your historical fiction as a casual McGuffin for everyone to chase after :-O
D'Artagnan pulls it out of the chest and as a loyal subject presents it to the Queen (why would he not have given her that in their previous meeting, rather than the teardrop necklace?) She announces that as it is a mystery of the Templars (ah, that perpetual excuse for fantasy magic!) Aramis is the proper person to have charge of it. But he also disclaims it with thanks, and offers the ring instead to Athos -- "the eldest and most deserving of us all". Athos has no wish for immortality, desiring only to be reunited with his lost son beyond the grave, and in his turn he offers the ring to Porthos, who gets more uncomplicated joy from the things of this world than anyone else he knows. Porthos protests that he is getting tired, and offers the ring to d'Artagnan, whom he sees as the most deserving, and who was struck down in the hour of his triumph before he could enjoy it.
But d'Artagnan -- despite the protests of his daughter, who cannot bear to lose him again -- also rejects the ring, saying that he chooses eternal friendship over immortality; he too is setting off for the afterlife. And he flings the ring out of the window, where it miraculously turns into a cloud of doves amid a dazzling light. Two of them flutter to land on him (I'm not sure if this is supposed to be part of the plot!) and one on the Queen, who appears delighted to have a dove sitting on her head and reaches up to cradle it while giving her blessing to Henri and Jacqueline to pair up together. D'Artagnan regards this encroachment upon his daughter with a decidedly fierce expression, but after a gentle reproof from the Queen he jerks his head in grudging consent and with the hint of a smile.
And then the four former Musketeers go out together and down the steps in front of the palace to meet the end of their brief day of renewed life, and the whole Court comes out to watch them and bid them farewell. The credits roll and the whole thing basically turns into a panto walkdown, with the other main characters following behind -- including Cardinal Mazarin, who was last spotted bobbing around the ceiling looking mournfully at his sequestered treasure, and apparently including Raoul walking hand in hand with Angelica, which makes no sense in an in-story context. Neither does a shot that seems to depict Raoul taking leave of Athos alongside the other Offspring bidding farewell to their parents... I suspect that nobody ever imagined that anyone in the audience would be straining their eyes to make out the details of what was happening to the characters beneath the rolling credits obscuring the screen :-p (But somebody did go to the trouble of setting up and filming that material, presumably in order to give the actor equal screen credit in the finale sequence irrespective of the logic of having the character in existence at that point!)
One advantage of filming your sequel[s] so many years after the original hit is of course that the cast have aged at the same rate as their characters are supposed to have done, without any special effects or recasting required; we genuinely are seeing Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan thirty years later. Mikhail Boyarsky has lost none of his live-wire energy as a middle-aged d'Artagnan whose bright eyes and flashing grin still dominate every scene he is in; Porthos's luxuriant chestnut locks are revealed eventually to be an (in-film) wig when he wipes his brow, but he too still radiates physical power and the uncomplicated joy of living. The other two are sadly greyed by the passing years, alas; time and regrets have clearly taken their toll on Athos, the oldest of the friends, who is grave and frail even after his 'resurrection', while golden Aramis the beautiful is shockingly ravaged by age to a degree that makes him almost unrecognisable. They both take pretty much a backseat role.
The younger generation are not particularly distinctive and don't get a lot of characterisation, with the arguable exception of Angelica; the performers come across as fairly bland and interchangeable pretty faces who could have come from any modern sitcom. I did end up with a sense of genuine relationship between the generations, though -- I can definitely see this Porthos as an larger-than-life indulgent father to his little girl, and d'Artagnan as a proud parent cheerfully ready to extricate Jacqueline from whatever over-ambitious scheme she has got herself into this time, while Athos both leans on his son's support and tries to protect him. Under the circumstances Aramis and Henri don't really have much of a relationship other than a general starstruck 'my father is famous' versus 'I'm cheering for this one because he was my contribution', but that's understandable. Leon, I think -- ironically, for a self-made man so competent and efficient -- is more needy and eager to see something of himself in Porthos, who is prodigal enough in his affections to lavish them in return.
Rereading what I have been writing above, I think the reason for my relatively favourable reaction to the film lies in the fact that, however patently ridiculous and cardboard it might have been, it evidently managed to give me Feelings about the characters. Boyarsky still has the ability to carry the film practically single-handed with conviction (without his d'Artagnan, I'm not sure how much of it would be left) and, as with "Love Never Dies", I found myself spending far more time analysing the content than its quality objectively deserved -- in this case simply to try to understand what was going on when I could barely comprehend one word in five, but I did care enough to *want* to know....
I'm not sure how much more sense the plot would have made if I had watched the four films in order, rather than accidentally jumping to the final one in the series :-) An explanation for the existence of all those (?illegitimate) offspring might at least have been hinted at, and I definitely suspect there was some backstory for the Queen that I was expected to know.
But contrary to what I initially wrote above, having now gone through the entire non-subtitled film for a *third* time in order to clarify in my mind what was in the 'extended cut' and what wasn't -- and most of the extra material was, as usual, better left off, although there were a couple of bizarre sequences that apparently *did* make it through the cutting process but somehow failed to register with me on the first viewing all the same! -- I found that I definitely was picking up more of the dialogue than previously simply by virtue of the constant exposure and repetition. And, admittedly, by virtue of actually using a dictionary on words that stood out; even by learning two or three new words at every viewing you do very gradually acquire necessary vocabulary. If I repeated this sort of intensity of immersion on a daily basis for months I might actually improve my comprehension (but I draw the line at repeatedly watching bad films over and over again for months at a time!)
The irony is that I only watched the film in the first place in order to try to get some context for a song in an Athos fanvid... which I had already seen mentioned as existing only in the extended cut! (And yes, it does... and you can see exactly why they cut it, because it doesn't really fit into that scene and definitely ruins the pacing. Presumably the songs were written separately before the script was finalised.) So I suppose I must have known on some level from the start that I was going to have to watch the three-hour-plus version as well :-O
Am I really that much of an Athos-fan? I didn't think I was even a fan of the Musketeers story in particular; yes, I'll admit to verging on fervent 'fandom' of the 1978 musical, which outweighs this one on just about every level imaginable -- well, I think when you find yourself being recommended random Russian-language YouTube videos *and watching them*, to be honest that's got to be a bit of a giveaway -- but I'm certainly not planning to write fan-fiction on that, let alone on this one. Although, as in the case of "Love Never Dies", a bad film probably offers more openings than a good one ;-)
But I did get an idea for a typical Igenlode angst-fic based on a prompt from a fanvid I saw for the BBC 'Musketeers'... which I may or may not write! (I've written it in my head, and am not sure it merits actual publication; if I had come up with a resonant ending for it, that would be different, but I didn't really.)
As for Athos -- this omitted song basically suggests, so far as I could make out the lyrics (some of which were transcribed in the comments to the original fanvid that used it) that at the end of his life he saw himself as having "betrayed his love" for Milady in encompassing her death for the greater good and to save his friends. Bringing her up out of nowhere at a point where the actual surrounding dialogue was about his longing to see *Raoul* felt like an irrelevant intrusion; and I never got the impression that Athos spent his life immured in love for his wife's memory in any case, romantic as the idea might seem. What scarred him was not the fact that he killed the woman he had passionately loved to the point of blindness (there is no indication that when he encountered her again, plotting against d'Artagnan's life, he felt any nostalgia for the sham of his marriage) -- it was the fact that the woman he had passionately loved had never even existed in the first place.
He was basically in the position of those woman activists who were used as 'cover' for police infiltration, and who felt utterly violated when they discovered that the man with whom they had believed they had a relationship was not only manipulating them for cynically political ends -- making use of their beliefs and ideals while falsely pretending to share them -- but in many cases already had a wife and family back 'home'. The man they thought they loved was a completely fictional construct tailored to exploit their weaknesses, and that sort of discovery is calculated to shatter your self-belief and any inclination to trust or open up to vulnerability again.
I wondered if the song made any more sense in the original context of the film, but it didn't :-p I can imagine that there might exist a context in which that particular train of thought could plausibly develop, but the 'ring of immortality' guff definitely wasn't it...
Should I attempt to watch the other two films in the 'Soviet sequence', "Twenty Years After" and "Thirty Years After"? I managed to locate them on YouTube, but of course those are not subtitled either -- and I know from the experience of watching excerpts of the first one with and without the subtitles just how much character detail and charm gets missed out when you can only grasp the very broadest outline of the scene, even when you have previously seen it with the captions and know in theory what is happening. So if they are any good, I wouldn't get anything like the full effect... and if they are not good (and from comments on the original I derived the general impression that, as tends to happen, each sequel was a little more of a let-down than the first, until you reach the stage of a triumph of hope over experience) then I would get the disappointment of that discovery.
On the other hand, could they actually be any worse than this one? ;-p On the third hand, I never really liked Dumas' "grown-up" theme of the friends growing away from each other and finding themselves ultimately in conflict; it may be interesting character development, but it is a depressing experience. So do I want to experience an adaptation of my less-favourite bits? (At least this film started from the end of Dumas and proceeded to consciously bring the characters back together :-P)
no subject
Which over the following nine months I have completely forgotten again in any case :-p